A day after the attack on the Boston Marathon, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced she is stepping up security at transportation hubs nationwide “out of an abundance of caution,” using “measures both seen and unseen.” Amtrak and the New York and Washington subway systems have amped up security, and scares at airports on Tuesday included a partial evacuation of New York’s LaGuardia because of a suspicious package.

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In New York, rattled travelers called in suspicious bags in the past 24 hours at more than triple the usual rate, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said Tuesday.

The House’s top Homeland Security leaders told POLITICO that the blasts are evidence the U.S. needs to continue moving toward a “risk-based” security system, concentrating on big cities, crowded events and transportation hubs. But the lawmakers disagreed on one element of that system — the Transportation Security Administration’s recent move to allow some types of small knives on planes in the name of allowing screeners to focus on bigger risks like explosives.

The House leaders agreed on one thing, however: The transportation networks that millions of Americans pass through every day are loaded with vulnerable soft targets.

“Quite honestly, we’ve been surprised for a while that something like this hasn’t already happened,” said House Homeland Security Chairman Mike McCaul (R-Texas).

“We know where the threats are,” McCaul said. “It’s D.C., New York, Chicago, L.A. and Houston and some other cities, as well. It happened in Boston. They happen time and time again in cities. [The strategy] should be more risk-based.”

He and top committee Democrat Bennie Thompson of Mississippi said Homeland Security has told them that safeguards have been stepped up specifically in New York, Boston and Washington.

At a news conference Tuesday, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg called the bombing a “terrible reminder” of why the city has invested so much in security. Kelly said “no specific threats” have been made against New York, but the city has redeployed resources as if it were a target anyway.

This kind of reassessment is natural after traumas like the Boston bombings, said Henry Willis, director of Rand Corp.’s Homeland Security and Defense Center.

He added that large crowds will always offer the “potential for things to go wrong.”

Bustling public areas like subway stations and other transit hubs are particularly vulnerable, McCaul said, adding that it wouldn’t be difficult for anyone, especially a “lone wolf,” to bring an improvised explosive device into a packed underground train station.

“We know they continue to target transportation. Whether it’s aviation, or it could be subway,” McCaul said. “I would still submit the subway’s very vulnerable. The canines are doing a good job, but they are still very, very vulnerable to an attack.”

McCaul said he expects to see more bomb-sniffing dogs at crowded events.

Asked about the similarities between crowds at a sporting event like the marathon and a busy transportation hub, Thompson agreed with McCaul that vulnerabilities exist.

“There are a lot of soft targets in this country,” Thompson said.

A spokesman for New York’s Metropolitan Transit Authority, which runs the state’s subway plus two of the busiest commuter rail lines in the country, said the MTA’s police department is stepping up coverage and bag inspections, perhaps indefinitely.

“The increased coverage will continue until we fully understand the cause of the explosions in Boston,” spokesman Aaron Donovan said in an email.